The Hour has Come

Thanks very much, Anne. Hello again.

Why was I born? Why am I living? What do I get? What am I giving?

Why do I want a thing I daren't hope for? What can I hope for?

I wish I knew.

That cheerful ditty was written almost 100 years ago by Oscar Hammerstein,

but for many people it would resonate today as well.

What is the point? Is there any purpose in life?

What should we be looking for?

It was maybe put a bit more succinctly and more recently by Lana Del Rey.

She wrote in one of her songs,

You and I, we were born to die.

Quite depressing, isn't it, to think of life without a purpose?

And yet I think many people today feel that,

that life is a bit pointless,

they don't know where they're going,

they don't know why they're here,

they don't know what's going to happen to them.

There's a website many of you may be familiar with called Quora.

On Quora, people can post questions on practical, intellectual, philosophical things,

and lots of people will pile in with their replies.

And if you type in something like,

Why was I born to die?

You might get answers that sound something like this.

We exist because of evolutionary pressures from the environment among us,

occurring over millions of years.

There is no purpose to our existence,

because evolution has no goal in mind or vision for how we should be.

Evolution doesn't have a mind, we just exist.

Any meaning or purpose we ascribe to life or death is manufactured by humans

to make our lives easier to get through,

because it's hard for people to accept a meaningless thing.

Depressing, isn't it?

Well, what I want us to take from this morning

is that life does have a purpose,

and our lives can have real purpose to them.

And we're going to see that because we're looking at the person

who had the most awareness of the purpose on his life of anyone,

Jesus Christ.

We're going to think about what that purpose was.

We're going to think about some of the people Jesus met

and interacted with in the passage that I read to us,

and the challenge that comes to us through them.

Now, usually I'm going to start in the middle this morning,

because I think that's where the core of the passage is,

and it's where we get most of the background to it from.

So we're going to start, I'm going to read verses 27 and 28,

where Jesus is speaking, and he says,

Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour.

No, it was for this very reason that I came to this hour.

Father, glorify your name.

Then a voice came from heaven.

I have glorified it and will glorify it again.

As we read through John's Gospel,

something that we find referred to many times

is the hour, Jesus' hour.

Three times in the earlier part of the Gospel we've looked at up till now,

Jesus says, My hour has not yet come.

That was when he did his first miracle at Cana,

and twice when people tried to seize him and couldn't,

because the time hadn't yet come.

And three times he says, My hour has come.

So it was at the start of the passage we read,

or at the start of the section that I'm looking at just now,

in verse 23.

He says it again, or said again about him,

in John 13 at the start of his upper room ministry,

and then again at John 17,

as the Lord prays to his Father.

The whole of Jesus' life was centered around the fact

that there was an hour coming.

What was that hour?

It was when he was crucified,

when he died on the cross for us.

And the whole of his life was building up to that moment

when he would go to the cross,

and when he would take our sins on himself.

I think we can learn three things about the hour

from the verses that I read just now.

First of all, it was an hour of agony.

Secondly, Jesus, as he looked forward to it,

he was troubled.

He says, Now my soul is troubled.

What shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour.

Mostly in the Gospels, we read,

Jesus is going resolutely towards Jerusalem.

He knows that it's God's will that he should suffer

and die on the cross,

and he is determined to fulfill that will.

But just once or twice,

we get a glimpse into what Jesus really felt

about what was going to happen.

The other obvious time is in the Garden of Gethsemane,

when he says,

Father, if it's possible, let this cup pass from me.

And he says,

What shall I say?

Father, save me from this hour.

Because what was in front of Jesus was truly awful.

I think at times it's easy to think of Jesus' sacrifice on the cross

and to kind of have almost in our minds,

well, he was God.

It wasn't as bad for him as it would have been for us.

Well, Jesus was man, fully man, as well as God.

And the betrayal by his friends,

the mockery, the whipping,

and the agony of crucifixion were very, very real to him,

as they would be to us.

We can perhaps begin to feel what that is like.

What I think is much more difficult for us to imagine and to understand

is that when Jesus was dying on the cross,

he was completely separated from his Father God.

Jesus took our sins on himself.

And a holy God can't look on sin,

and Jesus felt he had been abandoned, forsaken by his Father.

And that, I believe, was the greatest suffering of all,

as he took the punishment for sin,

as he was separated from God.

And so he's looking forward as he comes to his hour,

and he is looking forward with dread to what is about to happen to him.

Second thing, though, it's an hour of obedience.

So he says,

Shall I say, Father, save me from this hour?

No, it was for this very reason that I came to this hour.

When we think of reasons why Jesus came into the world,

there are several.

He came to show us what God is like.

So we look at Jesus, and we can see God among us,

and how God lives.

He came to be an example to us,

to show us how we should live,

the kind of lives that should characterize us.

He came to bring us God's words.

We were thinking of that in the early service this morning,

that Jesus came with the word of God to speak to us.

But above all, he came to die.

The reason he came into this world was that he should die for our sins.

Only if someone was able to take the penalty for our sins,

take the punishment that was due to us,

could we be forgiven.

And no one but Jesus could have done that.

He was the only one who met the requirement of being absolutely sinless,

and therefore able to take the punishment for us.

And so whatever the cost,

Jesus was determined he was going to obey the will of his Father,

and he was going to go and to die on the cross.

The hour of agony was also an hour of obedience.

Obedience even to death on a cross.

Then the third thing is that it is an hour of glory.

Now you might think, looking at it superficially,

that someone dying on a cross is perhaps the least glorious thing

almost that you could imagine.

It's humiliation, it's shame, it's pain,

it's the mockery of people round about.

What is glorious about that?

And yet Jesus says,

the hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.

And then he says again,

Father, glorify your name,

and the confirmation comes from God.

I have glorified it,

and will glorify it again.

This is one of only three times when we hear that voice from heaven.

The others were at Jesus' baptism,

and at the transfiguration,

and at this third really significant moment in his life,

he gets again the affirmation from his Father.

Through the cross, Jesus is glorified.

Through the cross, God is glorified.

And Jesus gives us a little indication of what that was in the following verses.

So in verse 31, he says,

Now is the time for judgment on this world.

Now the prince of this world will be driven out.

The cross at Calvary might have seemed at that time to many people to be defeat for Jesus.

He had traveled around Galilee and Judea for three years.

He had enjoyed a lot of popularity.

We'll come back to the early verses of his entry into Jerusalem.

He enjoyed a lot of popularity.

And then he was nailed to a cross.

And people looking at that thought,

Well, that's him defeated.

I think the disciples felt that too,

because they didn't really understand what was going on.

But Jesus says,

No, it's not defeat.

It's victory.

When I die on the cross,

I will overcome the evil one once and for all.

The world is going to be judged through my action.

And the evil one, the print of the world, will be driven out.

Now that was not an immediate thing.

We still have the work of the devil.

We still have evil in our world as we see every day.

And yet the devil has been defeated.

And one day that will be obvious.

And he was defeated by Jesus dying on the cross.

By the punishment Jesus took,

and by the fact that he could shout at the end,

It is finished.

The work that God had given him, he had done.

And that is glorious.

The other glorious thing is in verse 32.

Jesus says,

I, when I am lifted from the earth,

will draw all people to myself.

This little incident was prompted originally

by a question for some Greeks.

She said,

We want to see Jesus.

And I think that is what triggered Jesus to say,

My hour has now come.

Because God's word was about to go beyond

just the confines of Israel,

beyond just the Jewish nation,

and to go into the whole world through Jesus.

And how did that happen?

It happened by being lifted up on a cross

and dying for our sins.

And the glory of Jesus on the cross

is what has attracted many of us to him.

And we are part of his reward

for what he did as he died for our sins.

So the hour that Jesus is talking about

is an hour of agony.

It's an hour of horrific suffering.

But it's also an hour of obedience,

of obedience to God.

And it's an hour of glory

as evil is defeated,

as Jesus is able to bring the whole world to him,

all those who will believe.

Before we go back and look at the rest of the passage,

let's just take this challenge for ourselves.

Do we believe that?

When we look back on Jesus,

when we look back on the cross,

do we understand how much he went through for us?

Do we understand the extent of his obedience to God?

Do we understand the glory that is there?

And have we taken him for ourselves?

Have our sins been forgiven by trusting in him?

Now let's go back,

and we'll just walk quite quickly

through the whole of the passage.

And this time as we go through,

what I particularly want to look at

is how Jesus challenges us

and how people respond to him.

So there'll be two things there as we go along,

the challenge of Jesus

and the response of the people.

So I've headed the first part of the passage,

coming as a king.

This is the very familiar story to most of us

of Jesus' triumphant entry into Jerusalem,

Palm Sunday.

John tells us slightly differently

from the other Gospels,

and I want to focus particularly

on what John has to say to us through it.

And the first thing we might notice

is that there are two crowds

in the section from verse 12

through to verse 19.

There's a crowd that's come to Jerusalem

for the festival.

Many of them probably had come from Galilee,

so they would have seen the miracles

that Jesus did when he was there,

and they already would have an idea

of how special he was.

The second crowd is in verse 17,

and that is the crowd that had witnessed

the raising of Lazarus

that we looked at two or three weeks back.

That miraculous event

where Jesus brought back to life

someone who had been dead for four days.

And these people too would be coming

in the crowds,

and they were talking to others

about the wonderful things

that they had seen.

And as these two crowds come together

and others along with them,

the atmosphere becomes one of celebration

and one of anticipation.

So they see Jesus coming into Jerusalem,

and they think this could be the moment

when Jesus frees us from the Romans.

We have this great, powerful man

who can do such wonderful things,

a charismatic figure.

He's the one who's going to finally

free us from the bondage of Rome.

And what does Jesus do?

He sits on a donkey.

He finds a donkey,

and he sits on it to go through the crowd.

It would have been a familiar sight

in many cities

for a victorious emperor or general

to come back

and for the crowds

to throng around him.

And he would be on a war horse,

the biggest horse you could imagine,

so that he was seen

as someone who was really powerful

and was really to be feared.

Jesus chooses to come

and to sit on a donkey.

And by that,

I think he's saying

that his kingship at that time

was not in overthrowing the Romans.

He was coming as a king,

but he was coming as God's king

as the one who would do God's will.

And I think that's the quotation from Zechariah

that the disciples say

they only understood later.

That's the significance of that.

It's the king coming,

but he's coming in humility.

He's coming as the servant king.

He's coming as the savior king

rather than as one

who is going to come at that stage

with military might.

And yet the people don't understand.

Most of the people want him to be king

and want him to go

and overthrow the Romans.

The disciples may be rather confused.

John says they only understood later

the significance of what was happening.

And the rulers, the Pharisees,

they were worried.

They thought he's becoming

just a bit too popular.

And so that would have made them

even more resolved

that they would get rid of him,

that they would ensure that he died.

But he was coming as a king,

but not as a king

that the people expected.

The middle section,

and we've talked quite a lot about that already,

so we'll go through it

a little more quickly now,

I've called going like a grain.

And there's this wonderful picture

at the centre of it

of the grain of wheat

that falls into the ground

and dies.

Now again, we might think about

some of the reactions

around to what's said here.

The Greeks, I think,

were more than just curious sightseers.

They actually genuinely wanted

to see and to understand Jesus.

At the end, the people were saying,

well, we don't understand.

They couldn't accept

what Jesus was saying to them.

But in the middle,

there is this challenge.

The hour has come

for the Son of Man to be glorified.

Jesus says,

unless a grain of wheat

falls into the ground and dies,

it remains only a single seed.

But if it dies,

it produces many seeds.

Now we look at that

and think that is true of Jesus.

That is what has happened with Jesus.

Jesus died on the cross

for our sins,

and he brought many,

many millions of people

to know God

and to have eternal life.

And yes, it certainly is true of Jesus.

But the application he gives

is not to himself.

It's to us.

The grain of wheat

that falls into the ground

and dies and then springs up,

Jesus says,

we should be like that.

Anyone who loves their life

will lose it,

or anyone who hates their life

in this world

will keep it for eternal life.

Whoever serves me

must follow me

and where I am,

my servant also will be.

My father will honour

the one who serves me.

So the challenge to us is,

are we willing and able

to follow the example of Jesus?

Are we willing to give our lives

for him,

perhaps literally,

but certainly in terms

of the sacrifices

that we are prepared to make?

Jesus never promises

that life with him

will be easy.

Indeed,

at the moments

of his greatest popularity,

these are the moments

when he issues

these kinds of challenges.

John chapter 6,

John 6 · chapter mention

defeating of the 5,000.

The people want

to make him king.

And then Jesus gives

some very difficult teaching

about the bread of life

and what that means.

And most people then decide,

well, actually,

we're not going to follow him.

because their trust in him

was very superficial.

And maybe he's doing

the same thing here.

You've got people

who feel he's very popular,

who feel he's someone

really to be admired

and looked up to.

You've got others

who are wanting

to find out more about him.

And Jesus says,

if you follow me,

it will be difficult.

Don't come expecting

just to be part

of a victorious army

that will sweep the land

and will get rid

of all the Romans.

If you follow me,

you have to be willing

to make sacrifices.

I think that's a very good lesson

for us as well.

If we're Christians,

if we believe

in the Lord Jesus,

we need to be willing

to make sacrifices

for him.

Often when we think

about Christian service

and we talk to people,

and if you become

a new member of the church,

we talk to you

about how you can serve.

Often we think about

what are the things

people will enjoy?

What are the things

they're good at?

These are the things

that we'll ask them to do.

And quite right,

we want people

to enjoy their service.

We want them to do things

they're really gifted for.

But not all Christian service

is like that.

And in our service,

there will be times

when there are things

that are really hard

that God calls us to do.

And like Jesus,

we need to be willing

to do them.

I talk frequently

and I don't apologise

for it about my grandparents.

My grandparents

were missionaries in India.

And one of the yearly events

of the missionaries in India

was a festival

at a place called

Antarvedi.

It was just a few miles

from there

where they were working.

And it was a massive

Hindu festival.

But a quarter million

or more Hindu people

used to come

on pilgrimage

every year.

And they came to bathe

at the junction

where the Godafri River

flows into the Bay of Bengal

to bathe, I think,

for washing away of sins.

But it was a huge event

and a real festive atmosphere

and there were stalls

and all sorts of things there.

And the missionaries

used to go every year

and they would stand

and they would hand out tracts,

they would sell gospels

and they would talk to people

who were willing to listen.

And more often than not,

they had a really hard time.

People would shout abuse at them

and sometimes they would

throw things

and it was only the rubbish

the missionaries feel

they got off fairly lightly.

I was struck by something

that one of the missionaries

wrote about this.

He says,

we attend in fear

and shall be very glad

when it's over

kind of feeling.

It was something they felt

was God's will for them to do.

It was the right thing to do.

But it was really difficult.

They didn't look forward to it.

They didn't enjoy it.

But they had the satisfaction,

I'm sure,

looking back,

of knowing that they had done

what they thought was right.

And for us too,

there may be situations

which are really hard for us.

Perhaps when we put somewhere

where people are not sympathetic

to Christians

and we need to let people know

who we believe in

and what we stand for.

And that can be really,

really difficult.

And yet we can know

that Jesus has been through

something much,

much more difficult

than we ever will.

And that when we face

these things,

he will be with us.

We are the grains

of wheat

that need to be willing

to sacrifice ourselves

for the great harvest

that can come from it.

Finally,

just very briefly,

let's look at the last

couple of verses.

Verses 35 and 36.

Jesus told them,

you're going to have the light

just a little while longer.

Walk while you have the light

before darkness overtakes you.

The theme of light

is one that we get

throughout John's Gospel.

I think as we come

to the end

of Jesus' public ministry,

John is very deliberately

reminding us

of the very start

of his Gospel.

where John says

the light came into the world

and the darkness,

now shone in darkness,

and the darkness

could not overcome it.

Then we have chapters 8 and 9

where Jesus talks about

being the light

of the world.

We have that great miracle

where he gives the blind man

back his sight.

And now at the end

of his public ministry,

Jesus gives a very

stern warning.

He says,

you've had the light.

I've been with you.

You've had the opportunity

to believe

and to follow me.

And that opportunity

is about to go.

I won't be here

very much longer.

What is your response

to that?

Will you believe

in the light

while you still have time?

Or will you choose

still to walk in darkness

and to walk

in your own way?

If you have the light,

you can live life

with a purpose.

You can see

where you're going.

You can see

what the right thing

is to do.

If you're walking

in darkness,

then life does become

a bit aimless

like we were thinking

about at the beginning.

Only in the light

is there true

fulfillment.

Now, we're not

in an identical situation.

Jesus hasn't been

physically among us.

But in many ways,

it's very similar.

The call still comes

to walk in the light.

To look at Jesus

and to see in him

everything that we should be

and to take his guidance

through the Spirit

about how we should live.

And for all of us,

there will come a time

when that's no longer

possible.

We don't know

how long we've got

in this world.

And it's really important

while we have

the opportunity

to trust in Jesus,

to accept forgiveness

through him,

and to live lives

that are obedient to him,

that are walked

in the light,

that are walked

the way

that Jesus

walked.

Let's all make sure

that we do live

in the light

of Jesus.

Let me end by going back

to where we were

at the beginning

and talking about purpose.

One of the most

influential Christian books

of this century

was by Rick Warren

from Saddleback Church

in California

called

The Purpose Driven Life.

And Rick Warren

identifies five

particular purposes

that each Christian

should have.

and they're very much

connected

and not surprisingly

with the kind of purposes

that we as a church

would have,

the priorities

that we would give.

And the challenge

for us

if we're Christians

is

do we fulfil

all

these purposes?

Or are there some

where we think

yes, that's quite good

and others

we're not really

taking heed of?

So the five purposes

I've paraphrased slightly.

We want to worship God.

We want to recognise

the greatness of our God

and to bring to him

the worship

of our voices

but the worship

of our lives

as well.

We want to love others.

We want to show

the love that Christ had

to everyone

round about us

and to do it

unselfishly.

To look for the interests

of others

rather than

our own interests.

We want to become

like Jesus.

That's what we call

discipleship.

Becoming like Jesus

and following

his example.

We want to serve God

serve him in the church

and serve him

among one another.

And we want to reach out

we want to witness

to others

to tell them

about Jesus.

Are these not

five great purposes

for us to have?

Life is not

meaningless.

Life is not

pointless.

Life that is

truly lived

to the full

it is life

that seeks

to glorify God

as Jesus did

in everything

we do.

And that's reflected

by our attitude

to God

our relationship

with him

it's reflecting

our relationships

with one another

and it's reflected

in our relationships

with those

who don't yet know

the Lord Jesus

as we would seek

to witness

to them.

Let's live life

with a purpose.

Make sure

that we know

Jesus

as our saviour

but also

that we follow

him

as our Lord.

Let's pray together.

Father we thank you

for your word

this morning.

Thank you for the

challenge that Jesus

brings us

that we should be

like him

that we should be

willing to give

our lives

for your glory.

And we thank you

for the tremendous

example he sets

and particularly

for his death

on the cross

that great purpose

for which he came

into the world

that hour

that was always

in his mind

as he went

around

and that hour

when he took

on himself

our sins

and the punishment

that we deserve.

We thank you for him

and pray that all of us

will put our trust

in him

and will choose

to follow him

and to enjoy

real purpose

in our lives.

We give you our thanks

and we commit ourselves

to you now

in Jesus name.

Amen.